Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria (Cagliari, Italy)

It was built in 1829 in the farthest part in the eastern of the district of Villanova.

The Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria was planned by the military Captain Luigi Damiano, and it put an end to the habit of burying the dead inside the walls of the city and in churches (following the text of the Napoleonic decree of Saint Cloud on 12th June,1804). In the past, such form of burying the dead was the cause of several and dreadful pestilences, among others the one of 1652, that ended by intercession of Saint Ephysius, whose feast on May 1th is connected to.

The cemetery was built in the open country, outside the walls, but soon it turned out to be inadequate to a city like Cagliari, which was constantly growing at that time. So, there was the need of making continuous enlargements and changes that reached their maximum extension with the so-called gradoni (large steps), which were planned by G. Cima.

Then, the simultaneous growth of the city, which was becoming increasingly urbanized, absorbed it to Cagliari completely. It has been impossible to do new burial since 1968, because there has not been enough room to do so.

The cemetery preserves a huge number of funeral monuments of great value which date back to the 19th-century, created by the chisel of A. Allegro, G.Sartorio, G.B.Troiani, P.G.B.Villa, A.Valli, and by local artists like P.Boero, F.Figari, F.Ciusa, F.D’Aspro, D.Fantini, A.Usai and many others. This huge number of monuments not only are the expression of the deepest sufferance of the dead’s close relatives, but they also represent the memory of many important persons, such as political, cultural, literary, scientific, military, religious and commercial personalities who have joined to the history of Cagliari.